Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if his Department will conduct a longitudinal study of people treated with puberty blocking medication prior to its ban in 2024 to identify any issues before beginning another trial.

The Government is committed to supporting research that delivers a more robust, evidence-based understanding of gender incongruence support and treatment, especially for children and young people. The Cass Review received cross-party support and highlighted remaining significant gaps in clinical evidence. The PATHWAYS study positively responds to the Cass Review’s recommendation that a trial of puberty suppressing hormones should be taken forward urgently as part of a wider programme of research.

We are supporting the National Health Service in delivering this programme of research, to ensure research is embedded at the heart of new children and young people’s gender services as they are shaped. One element of the programme of research is a data linkage study.

The data linkage study is observational in nature, linking and analysing existing, routinely collected healthcare data for adults who, as children, were referred into the former Gender Identity Development Service, previously operated by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.

This study requires no active patient participation and may provide useful insights on the experience and outcomes of former child gender service patients.

It is important to highlight that as the study is not designed as a comparative clinical trial, it will not provide direct evidence on the cause or effect of any individual treatment approach, nor provide evidence relating to any treatment’s safety or efficacy.

The data linkage study and the PATHWAYS clinical trial are separate, with different designs and purposes within a wider research programme.